


Tandem

by dame_de_la_chance



Category: Code Lyoko, Code Lyoko Evolution
Genre: Angst, Blood, Death, Gen, Gore, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Insanity, Non-Linear Narrative, Time Travel, Uh..... y I k e s, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, fixed fate, if their’s discrepancies and loopholes it’s because he’s losing his mind so..., implied suicide, its not.... very pretty, it’s supposed to be there, time loops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 00:38:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13915659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dame_de_la_chance/pseuds/dame_de_la_chance
Summary: Odd had an ability the team doesn’t know about, but all it gives him is grief and madness.In which Odd’s Future Flash was only a small part of a much larger programming scheme.





	Tandem

He was losing it.

Oh god, he had finally lost it. 

He knew his mind would fail him eventually. He knew the risks, the toils it would take on him. He knew that he couldn’t expect himself to cram in all these memories, not when there was just so much.

So many do overs.

So many timelines.

So many mistakes.

 

It was funny.

He couldn’t remember his best friend’s name, but he could remember their scream. He couldn’t remember his favourite colour, but he can remember what it felt like to be burned alive.

He couldn’t remember what happened yesterday, but he remembered what happened twenty time jumps ago. He remembered every insignificant detail of that trip, like the colour blood turns when oxidised, how much time it takes for a person to bleed out, and what it felt like to drown.

 

He had discovered his power so many timelines ago (he stopped counting after twenty- it hurt too much to realise just how many times he continuously failed both his friends and himself and the world). 

He learned the secret behind it ten timelines after finding it.

 

He had discovered it by complete accident. In fact, the entire incident was a complete accident. In the original timeline, the very first timeline before he began his jumps to make things right, he had died.

And it was so stupid- so preventable.

A car accident.

Yumi was old enough to drive. And so they went out to the theatre to watch the new blockbuster since they had a dead day. 

The way home, it began to rain, staring out as small sprinkles before turning into large drops of water falling at ridiculous speeds. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled angrily.

The semi came out of nowhere, it’s head lights like the light at the end of the tunnel.

The last thing he heard was screaming, the screeching of brakes, and the shattering of glass.

The last things he felt was the glass slicing against his skin, of the car flipping over as it was pushed off the road, the split seconds he was airborne, and when the car collided with the ground, and he was smashed against the metal roof, bones snapping like twigs. 

 

He wasn’t actually certain if that was the original timeline.

It all was jumbled, so many different versions beginning to blend together, as if he was painting a picture but couldn’t decide what to paint, yet continued to put the paint on paper and tried to decide as he stroked.

It was infuriating.

 

He discovered the secret when they had finally developed to reaching Tyron’s arc. They had been able to look deeper into more of the mysteries of Lyoko, and Jeremie had gotten information on it’s construction. It had taken so long to decode, to settle all of Franz’s encryption’s, but it was well worth the wait.

Franz Hopper had developed the program inside him- he couldn’t remember the proper name for it- in case of extreme failure. It was supposed to be a last resort feature should anything go wrong, be it XANA or nosy government officials.

The return to the past couldn’t bring back the dead, but this could.

He had planted it before he and Aelita fled to Lyoko. However, the power wasn’t actually accessible on Lyoko, and so Franz had been stuck there.

Odd wasn’t really sure why he had the power. He couldn’t remember.

He was almost completely certain it was because the code had been implanted in the scanner, and since he had been the first on Lyoko, the code had been transferred to him. It was just his luck.

 

He never did get that far again.

 

Return to the pasts couldn’t bring back the dead, but he could. His time manipulation allowed him to fold the universe around them, not literally jump back in time like the return to the past.

It was a crucial quality.

That possibility of resurrection was the reason he had been killed so many times (from what he understood, every time he died, it caused the code to reset and activate so he could time jump. He would always start back on the day they had discovered the supercomputer, always relieving his first day at school. He wasn’t entirely sure why it went back to that day in particular). It was why his power had been abused so much, why he had so many chilling memories of people dying in front of him, yet miraculously turning up alive when he went back in time.

He hated his power.

He wasn’t the person for this.

He was too emotional. He couldn’t possibly deal with the ghosts that haunted him daily. Not at all.

He knew each time he jumped that the friends he saw weren’t the friends he knew from the last jump. He knew that they hadn’t committed whatever degradable, greedy acts they had before.

He knew he shouldn’t become too attached to them. They always ended up dead.

 

He always became attached anyway.

Even if he didn’t quite trust them.

 

He could remember each time he died. 

Each time it was painful, and slow. Not all the time was it XANA related, some were accidents, but most weren’t. Some were... neither XANA nor accidental; with some, he knew exactly what he was doing when he held that knife or poured out that nail polish remover or placed those rocks in his pocket as he stared at the water reflecting his ragged image...

But he remembered them.

Maybe not quite individually.

Some of them repeated.

But he remembers the feeling of being burned alive, of having a building collapse on you, of drowning, of being stabbed in the heart, having his neck snapped...

He remembers it all quite well.

 

The hardest part was his friends. They always ended up dead- at least half the team, if not the whole. He may be able to stop some of the calamities, maybe stop a certain accident from happening, but no matter how much he knows beforehand the timeline changes against him in ways he hasn’t quite seen before.

And then, there was the other option.

Where they betray him.

He remembered each one going slowly insane, depending on who had been killed and who was left in the aftermath. When he had been left alone with Yumi, or Ulrich, or Jeremie, or Aelita or even William (and Laura... she was another story all together).

He watched desperation take hold.

It was understandable. They had watched all of their friends die. Insanity was what brought them so low to succumb to desperation.

He himself was in no better mental state than them. He didn’t judge.

He had planned on restarting the program anyway, but they had just gotten to him sooner than he had planned for himself.

He knows what it’s like to be stabbed in the back.

Literally.

 

There were many reasons why he kept it a secret. He refused to tell Jeremie- each time he did, it never ended well. Jeremie became careless because there would always be a second chance for them, because _Odd surely knew what he was doing, he’d already lived through this, right?_

Yumi never believed him- they weren’t quite that close, so it was understandable.

Ulrich became too dependent on his ability. Too reckless. Too willing to gamble on stakes that are too risky.

William’s inevitable betrayal (no matter how many times he tried to stop it, no matter how many times he had been saved only to be taken or tricked again and again and again...) made it difficult to speak to him. It worsened when the others outcasted him from the group.

He simply didn’t trust Laura, not like the others. There was something about her, something in her eyes, that mirrored something in him, and he couldn’t even trust himself, so how could he trust her?

Aelita was the lesser of evils, she always listened, always believed him, but past memories torment him from making the same mistake more than those few times.

So he remained silent until he would become outed. It would take quite some time; they weren’t anywhere near the eventual rise of Tyron like in that fifth timeline. 

He could wait. And would happily do so.

 

He hated his Future Flash.

In the beginning, it was simply a program. But it’s unpredictability and occasional uselessness was annoying. It always ended up giving him migraines, and it always left him defenseless at the worst of times.

He remembered all those times where Jeremie would tell him that he had deleted it. Jeremie hated it as well, but it was with a much greater disdain. He viewed it as a tactical disadvantage, which Odd assumes was partially true. 

But anyway, Jeremie wasn’t quite right.

He deleted only part of the program. The rest of it was his ability to go back in time, and he wasn’t sure if Jeremie could actually delete it. 

It was strange when he learned his Future Flash was apart of the program. It was the first part of the coding, to warn you of a Future so you can go back to prevent it. 

Odd often wondered if Franz had made a mistake somewhere with that part of the program. It was, as Jeremie often preached, fairly useless, and unlike his time travel powers, were only available on Lyoko.

He had a feeling it was an after thought. A rushed attempt to try to add some finesse or so to his already completed project.

He wasn’t quite sure why Future Flash existed, and he doubted he’d ever get far enough to find the answer.

 

The first time his memory began to fade, or at least when he had really noticed it, was when he was casually talking to Ulrich (he didn’t know which timeline it was, having lost count so long ago). It was hard to look him in the eye sometimes, to pretend things that hadn’t happen hadn’t happen. That his past wasn’t different than what Ulrich suspected.

“Aren’t you going back to Italy over summer vacation?”

“Why would I do that?”

“... because you live there and you can’t stay in France since you don’t have anywhere to stay at?”

Odd blinked. He frowned, trying to remember this stupid detail. He lived in Italy? Where in Italy did he live? What was his address? He felt as if he’d been living in France for lifetimes (and he supposed he had). 

“Of course,” he answered instead.

He didn’t think much of it.

 

It wasn’t until he forgot his birthday that he began to worry.

And when he forgot who Kiwi was, he knew he was screwed.

 

But those times were so long ago.

Odd had no idea how many times he had abused his power. He had no idea just how many times he had died, by his own hands, XANA’s, or another’s. 

All his memories blended together, all the timelines converged.

He wanted them to stay separate. He wanted his mind to go back to normal, to lose the years and years and years of memories he had certainly gained throughout each interval.

He just wanted to have the ability to die.

And to stay dead.

 

“What are you?” Jeremie had asked him once, his eyes reflecting soft fear and apprehension. He had cornered him in his own dorm, his hands on Odd’s desk, waiting for an answer.

Odd had wanted to laugh, cackles threatening to burst out of him, but he knew if he started he wouldn’t be able to stop. That was a question he had been asking himself for years.

“Your coding is completely corrupted,” Jeremie continued, watching Odd’s stony expression with paranoia. “I’ve always wondered why your coding seemed so much different than Yumi and Ulrich’s. And now I know. Your coding is completely corrupted, as if some virus had gotten a hold of it.”

There was a pause, as if Jeremie was waiting for him to defend himself. Waited for him to interject. Odd remained silent.

“It’s as if it’s been there for years. And we’ve only been fighting XANA for one.” He watched him with steely blue eyes. “Tell me Odd. Are you even human?”

Odd wondered that himself. The pride of the human race was their mortality. He could die, but he wouldn’t stay dead. Could he really be considered human?

 

It was the only time Jeremie had figured out something was wrong with his code. It didn’t end up amounting to much; XANA’s next attack after his confrontation had been catastrophic, and had nearly leveled Paris. Odd had been killed in the crossfire, by accident (always an accident), and restarted the timeline.

Odd wasn’t entirely sure what had led to Jeremie finding that out. He wasn’t sure why Jeremie had never figured out there was something odd with his code in any other timeline.

Did the corruption get fixed? He doubted it.

Odd had to admit, it still haunted him slightly, for various reasons.

Was he even human?

 

He knew everything that was going to happen. It was like living in a permanent state of deja vu. He knew every conversation, every lesson plan, every action before they were carried out. It was engraved in his mind by now, seared and branded.

He could ace school at this point, or at least the next three years of it, if he tried. But each timeline was liable to be a bust, and he had given up a long time ago to bother caring.

It was likely everything was going to go to hell no matter what he did. So why bother?

Of course, he’d try to save as many lives as possible. Of course, he still tried to stop XANA. Of course, he wanted to stop all of the terrible things he had endured throughout the time jumping.

But in the in between moments, in the lull of silence, of no more monsters... he didn’t see a point in trying. 

So, poor grades? No problem. Displine issue? No problem. Inability to commit to a relationship? No problem. 

It just... didn’t matter.

 

He remembered reading through Franz’s journals. He remembered reading about his theory on time. He hated it, and he wanted nothing more than to disprove his hypothesis on how time functioned, but all of his travels only pointed to the conclusion that Hopper was right.

Hopper’s theory was comparing the time to a body of water, like a river. It moved in one direction, flowing consistently as it always traveled forward.

If you skip a rock and toss it in, then it’ll cause a ripple. It’s splash the surface of the water, disturb the smooth surface the glassy water had previously been. But those ripples eventually faded back and the stream still continued to flow as if nothing had happened.

The ripples disappeared, as if that change hadn’t been made.

The metaphor was powerful. It meant that no matter what change he implemented, the time line would always smooth back out. If he saved Yumi or Ulrich or Jeremie or William or Aelita, they will just end up dying at a later date than planned.

It didn’t matter what actions he made.

The river will eventually sweep him up, smooth him over, as if he hadn’t changed anything at all.

 

He knew he was going insane.

In fact, he was certain he already done so. He felt as if his mind was scrambled, all of his marbles were lost. He didn’t know what was real anymore, didn’t know who he was. His friends just assumed he had always been so scatterbrained, but even they were beginning to worry when he couldn’t remember a conversation they had five minutes ago.

He wondered if Franz Hopper had felt this way. He had seen all of his video logs multiple times across multiple timelines. He had seen Franz Hopper’s gradual decline into madness.

He wondered if he was destined to fall, just like the man who had caused this mess.

 

He could see the blood on his hands. 

Sometimes, it was literal- he’d see the palms of his hands stained a crimson and jolt from his seat, earning a few laughs from the class.

Sometimes he’d see it smeared on the walls, stain his clothing, coat the ground, drip from the faucet.

He’d see the countless dead bodies that haunted him- their ghosts trailing after him wherever he went.

He never could forget their faces- their names- even as he was forgetting himself.

He knew they weren’t real, that none of it was, but some part of him screamed that it was. That he was finally facing the true reality. They seemed... so real.

 

This timeline he was in was finally advancing so far. They were so close to that second timeline- so close he could taste it.

They were eventually going to learn about the program, whatever it was called. And he’d probably have to out himself when they realise it ‘doesn’t exist’.

They were so close.

Odd couldn’t believe it.

Maybe this time... maybe this would be it.

Jeremie could help him find a cure for this program and they can finally destroy XANA and reunite Aelita with her mother and fix everything.

For the first time in such a long, long, time, he truly felt hope blossom in his chest.

They were so close.

 

Another massacre.

More deaths on his hand.

Blood splattered around him, and he knew. He knew before he heard the thunderous booms echo as shots rang out. He knew before the blood that spilled the cement became his own that it was game over. He knew before he saw his friend’s bodies hit the ground that this was the end. 

He had been wrong.

They weren’t going to be able to destroy XANA or fix him in this timeline, and he had been naive to think so.

He’ll have to try yet again, starting from scratch, only to live the last two (three?) years over and over and over again.

So close, yet so far.

 

 

_“I’m Odd Della Robbia, your brand new roommate!”_

**Author's Note:**

> I learned that Odd had time travel abilities in the video games and that gave me.... heavy Homura from Puella Magia Madoka Magica vibes..... and here we are...
> 
> Also, the last line is the introduction Odd makes to Ulrich in XANA Awakens after they meet for the first time.


End file.
